We waited to bring this story to you just in case the stock recovered (or took an even steeper dive) before the end of the trading day. But U.S. markets are now closed, meaning we can report that Yahoo’s stock fell exactly 5.66 percent today.
In fairness to Yahoo, almost everything with a ticker symbol suffered some damage over the past seven or so hours, as, after making up a lot of ground, the Dow and the Nasdaq still closed down 1.15 percent and 1.25 percent, respectively. The situations in the Middle East and Japan have made investors of all sorts nervous.
Just the same, Yahoo’s losses were much worse than average (1.25 goes into 5.66 over four times), which has to be a tough blow for shareholders.
The probable culprit’s easy to identify. Yahoo’s stock got a boost about two weeks ago when rumors spread that the company might sell its stake in Yahoo Japan to SoftBank. It climbed from $16.10 to $17.65 over the course of eight days as a result.
A sale’s now much less likely to occur, though. People in Japan have more pressing things to be concerned about than buying and selling pieces of paper, after all, and the Japanese economy may be weak even after everyone’s physical safety is ensured.
So now Yahoo’s stock is back to where it was before all the excitement about a sale.
Netflix’s stock, meanwhile, managed to skyrocket today, rising an impressive 7.91 percent despite everything that’s been going on. Credit a report from the NPD Group and an endorsement from Goldman Sachs.